Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a global technology investor that specializes in enterprise software, and Vista Credit Partners (VCP), its credit-investing arm, today announced their recognition on Inc. Magazine’s 2025 list of Founder-Friendly Investors.

This marks Vista’s sixth consecutive year honored in the private equity category and VCP’s third year in the lender category. The recognition reflects Vista’s 25-year track record of partnering with founders to scale category-defining companies through innovation, operational excellence and long-term alignment — across both equity and credit partnerships.

“Founders play an essential role in software and technology, and we take great pride in being the partner of choice for founder-led businesses seeking deep operational experience and technical resources that combine vision and ambition with execution at scale,” said Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners. “Our ability to provide more than just long-term capital has long been engrained in Vista’s investment ethos and across our portfolio ecosystem, enabling us to evolve our value creation engine through multiple technology cycles. This remains paramount as we enter the era of Generative and Agentic AI, which we believe will drive growth and opportunity in enterprise software that are orders of magnitude greater than prior innovation cycles.”

Earlier this year Vista rolled out its Agentic AI Factory–a forward-leaning collaboration with Microsoft, Google, AWS and other technology leaders to provide portfolio companies with resources to design, test and deploy agentic AI systems at scale. Today, 100% of Vista portfolio companies are working on developing AI and agentic products to enhance their proprietary data and customer-focused workflows, and over a third already have products production ready or in market.

VCP launched its eponymous FounderDirect non-sponsored lending platform in 2019 to provide tailored strategic financing alternatives for later-stage enterprise software companies seeking access to scaled credit and structured financing solutions. The platform has since deployed over $5.4 billion to leading software companies such as Arcadia, Fivetran, Metropolis and Navan.

The Inc. Founder-Friendly Investors list recognizes private equity and lending firms with proven records of supporting entrepreneurs while respecting their vision and company culture. The full 2025 list appears in the October issue of Inc. and is available online here.

About Vista Equity Partners

Vista is a global technology investor that specializes in enterprise software. Vista’s private market strategies seek to deliver differentiated returns through a proprietary and systematic approach to value creation developed and refined over the course of 25 years and 600+ transactions. Today, Vista manages a diversified portfolio of software companies that provide mission-critical solutions to millions of customers around the world. As of June 30, 2025, Vista had more than $100 billion in assets under management. Further information is available at vistaequitypartners.com. Follow Vista on LinkedIn, @Vista Equity Partners, and on X, @Vista_Equity.

The 2025 Inc. Founder-Friendly Investors list is an annual list that included a participation fee for consideration.

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